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- ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Sunday 1-9-00
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- "Police officers in St. Clair County report seeing
early-morning UFO" By Valerie Schremp Of The Post-Dispatch
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- In the past few days, Millstadt police Officer Craig
Stevens has slept little, taken countless phone messages from national
experts and heard all of the little green men jokes his fellow officers
can muster.
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- It's amusing -- to a point, he said.
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- "It's not like I'm the only one who saw it and I'm
Joe Blow from the local bar who just stepped out drunk, you know?"
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- Stevens, of Highland, and at least three other officers
from the Lebanon, Shiloh and Dupo police departments said they saw something
in the sky early Wednesday -- something that looked like a UFO.
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- Shaped like an arrowhead, sprinkled with dimmer lights
all over its surface and three brighter lights on its tail, the thing made
its northeast-to-southwest flight across the Metro East area about 4 a.m.
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- The first report came in to Highland police from the
owner of a miniature golf course. He was driving into Lebanon, so the police
contacted Lebanon authorities. The officer there guffawed at the dispatcher.
But he spotted the thing heading toward Shiloh, and he sped through traffic
lights to try to catch up with it. It reached Shiloh, where an officer
there spotted it.
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- Stevens, sitting in his patrol car in Millstadt on his
overnight shift, heard the radio chatter and drove to the north end of
town. He scanned the sky but saw only airplane lights.
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- Then he looked west.
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- "Wow," he thought, jumping out of the car.
"This thing's huge!"
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- He said it moved slowly, like a blimp, about 1,000 feet
off the ground. It was about two stories high and about three times as
long. In addition to the three lights in the back, dimmer lights sprinkled
the entire surface, almost, as he described it, like a "starfield
camouflage."
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- He grabbed his Polaroid camera and snapped a shot. The
object headed toward Dupo, and Stevens radioed dispatch. The dispatcher
radioed back, reporting an officer there spotted it too.
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- The Polaroid didn't develop well in the cold, and the
image only shows the three bright lights. At the station, Stevens made
an unofficial police report and sketched a likeness of what he saw.
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- "It's been driving me nuts since I've seen it,"
he said. "I haven't been able to sleep for the last day and a half."
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- He's searched the Internet for a likeness of the object
but can only find a picture of a "Stealth Blimp" on the Popular
Mechanics Web site. It looked like an experimental military ship, he said.
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- The only calls that Scott Air Force Base received about
the object were from the media, a spokeswoman said Saturday. And the military
base's control tower was closed at that hour.
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- Stevens has also fielded calls from the media, science
institutes, UFO experts, and a former FBI man who had "a hundred questions."
One expert was adamant that people spotted a similar ship in California
the day after Christmas. He and the Lebanon officer went on Art Bell's
nationally broadcast radio show.
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- Stevens said he is taking the attention, and his sighting,
in stride.
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- "It didn't scare me; it was cool. I'll never forget
it," he said _____
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- UFO Research http://home.fuse.net/ufo/
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